Ingri Mortenson and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire met at art school in Munich in 1921. Edgar's father was a noted Italian portrait painter, his mother a Parisian. Ingri, the youngest of five children, traced her lineage back to the Viking kings.

The couple married in Norway, then moved to Paris. As Bohemian artists, they often talked about emigrating to America. "The enormous continent with all its possibilities and grandeur caught our imagination," Edgar later recalled.

A small payment from a bus accident provided the means. Edgar sailed alone to New York where he earned enough by illustrating books to buy passage for his wife. Once there, Ingri painted portraits and hosted modest dinner parties. The head librarian of the New York Public Library's juvenile department attended one of those. Why, she asked, didn't they create picture books for children?

The d'Aulaires published their first children's book in 1931. Next came three books steeped in the Scandinavian folklore of Ingri's childhood. Then the couple turned their talents to the history of their new country. The result was a series of beautifully illustrated books about American heroes, one of which, Abraham Lincoln, won the d'Aulaires the American Library Association's Caldecott Medal. Finally they turned to the realm of myths.

The d'Aulaires worked as a team on both art and text throughout their joint career. Originally, they used stone lithography for their illustrations. A single four-color illustration required four slabs of Bavarian limestone that weighed up to two hundred pounds apiece. The technique gave their illustrations an uncanny hand-drawn vibrancy. When, in the early 1960s, this process became too expensive, the d'Aulaires switched to acetate sheets which closely approximated the texture of lithographic stone.

In their nearly five-decade career, the d'Aulaires received high critical acclaim for their distinguished contributions to children's literature. They were working on a new book when Ingri died in 1980 at the age of seventy-five. Edgar continued working until he died in 1985 at the age of eighty-six. »

D'Aulaires' Book of Trolls

By Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire

Trolls of all kinds—mountain trolls, forest trolls, trolls who live underwater and trolls who live under bridges, uncouth, unkempt, unbearable, unforgettable, and invariably unbelievably ugly trolls—fill the pages of D'Aulaires' Book of Trolls, the spectacularly illustrated and delightfully entertaining companion volume to the much-acclaimed D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths.

Here the husband-and-wife team of Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire explore the shadow side of Norse mythology, the night world in which the trolls work their wiles and carry on in the most bizarre and entertaining fashions, hunting for babies to eat or squabbling with each other in the blueberry patch. Trolls with multiple heads, trolls with heads they carry under their arms, and trolls with only one eye to share around, along with troll wives, whose long red noses are just the thing for stirring soup, roam the mountains of the north by night and retreat by day to sleep in caves full of silver and gold.

With their matchless talent as storytellers and illustrators, the d'Aulaires bring to life the weird and wonderful world of Norse mythology.

Publishers Weekly awarded the recently released New York Review Children's Collection edition of D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths the 2005 "Cuffie" Award for the book they were happiest to see back in print.

Reviews

The D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths taught a generation about the legends on which much of literature is based. Now their D'Aulaires' Book of Trolls by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire, first published in 1972, returns to print to shed light on another staple of Norway: the magical trolls, 'as old and moss-grown as the mountains themselves,' in all their diversity.
— Publishers Weekly

Available once again, this beautifully lithographed collection of lore introduces children to some of traditional literature's bad boys (and girls).
— School Library Journal

D'Aulaires' Trolls, an informative Baedekar on the moss-grown mountains of Norway and their weird inhabitants of more than a century ago, exemplifies a happy balance of art and text...Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire have completed the legends and descriptions with fittingly grotesque color and black-and-white sketches of myriad trolls.
— The Washington Post

...A title deserving a place on every child's bookshelf.
— Smithsonian Magazine

...A nearly perfect picture book.
— The New York Times

Also see:

D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths By Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire Preface by Michael Chabon The Caldecott medal-winning d'Aulaires once again captivate their young audience with this beautifully illustrated introduction to Norse legends.

D'Aulaires' Book of Animals Written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire This remarkably beautiful volume unfolds into an 8-foot long two-sided panoramic work of art on which the animals of the world are rendered in vibrant color and the moonlit shades of night.

The Two Cars Written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire On a moonlight night an old jalopy and a shiny new sports car race through the streets to find out who is the fastest and best. The d'Aulaires, whose books of Greek and Norse myths have enchanted older children for generations, present younger children with a modern take on the fable of the tortoise and the hare.

The Terrible Troll-Bird Written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire One summer's eve Ola, Lina, Sina, and Trina leave their village to gather firewood in the forest, when they're surprised by the hideous call of the terrible troll-bird, a giant rooster who pops up out of the treetops and swoops down to devour their beloved horse Blakken. Little does the terrible troll-bird know that he has finally met his match: his terrible days of terrorizing are over.

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